


snakeskin

by scarsimp



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist (Anime 2003), Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: An Au I have, Blood, Gen, I'm gonna make a post about it on my blog soon, Olivier centric, Olivier gets a haircut in this, Post-Promised Day, This au...
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-21
Updated: 2020-07-21
Packaged: 2021-03-04 18:53:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,110
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25431184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scarsimp/pseuds/scarsimp
Summary: Olivier was twenty-three years old when she became the big sister.
Comments: 9
Kudos: 29





	snakeskin

**Author's Note:**

> I CAME UP W THIS AU WHILE WATCHING 03 AND IM V PASSIONATE ABOUT IT OKI

Olivier was twenty-three years old when her sister disappeared. She was twenty-three when her father stopped talking about her and her mother started crying in the kitchen at night, and she was still the same age when she suddenly stopped and started smiling at everyone instead. Face cold, eyes colder, she looked like the porcelain dolls Olivier’s long dead grandmother would collect and it made her skin crawl. 

Olivier was twenty-three years old when she became the big sister.

She had always been a sister, the second oldest- a middle child but stubborn enough to demand attention anyway, always getting into things and tearing her new dresses faster than the rest of the lot. She had just never been the sister. The oldest one, the one who was supposed to not panic or make decisions when the parents couldn’t anymore. The responsible one. The one who took over when her parents finally croaked. That had always been someone else’s job. 

Even when she wasn’t around, that had been one thing she didn’t have to think over, never had to plot on who would inherit the will, who would hire the staff, who would arrange funerals and sickly sweet flowers in all the shades of false white they grew them in. Olivier hated flowers, anyway. It had always fallen to the heir, until it didn’t anymore and Olivier was given a quietly written note with no sender and her father’s familiar cursive. 

She had just been moved to Briggs, the air bitingly cold compared to central and making her knees and elbows ache even at her young age. Something about it made Olivier feel awake- whether it be the prickling of snow on her ears or the way it made her eyes squint closed. Every face was a stranger, someone she had never seen before and after a while, would never see again. The coffee was terrible and the tea was worse but it kept her up on night shift and after a while she realized she had made friends. 

Of course, that is when it truly broke apart. 

The letter was yellowed parchment and bloody ink pressed too harshly into it and the same words over and over again, as if Olivier had swallowed them down and choked on them. “Missing in action. Irresponsible. Reckless. Weak” 

Her gloved thumb scraped over the last word over and over, pacing a tempo as she stared down at it and breathed through her nose. The air was just as cold as usual and the sip of coffee she tried to take felt more like sludge in her mouth. Her sister was dead. The words were bitter on her tongue just as they stung in her mind and Olivier cursed herself for the strength in which she clenched her teeth.

“Weak.” She decided to stay up north and ignore her holiday break time that year. And every year after. When her family questioned her on it she snarled like the bear she was supposed to embody and turned her head the other way. 

Olivier never found out if they found her sister, though some foolish part of her that she could never quite crush down told her that she was somewhere, someone else in a world Olivier would never be a part of. It didn’t matter if they would sneak out together and scrape knees on concrete, or if she’d catch Olivier when she climbed too high in the manor garden and would surely break something if she jumped down on her own. 

It was after twelve years that she realized she had never cried over her and she wondered if that was truly the sign that she had never died. It was only once the promised day had been thwarted and the homunculi slain, after god himself had taken over and almost won did Olivier sit down and think over it. Listen over it. Her only brother had come to her with empty eyes and, harsh as she may be, there was something about him in that moment that she couldn’t turn away. She cursed that in herself too.

Alex spoke to her in fragments of a whisper, his voice lower than she’d heard in years and just as serious. 

Twelve years of inklings of a thought just to find out her sister had been alive. Alive and now dead, as if finding out she had survived wouldn’t already be a cruel joke from the world. Long dead, according to Alex. Alphonse and Edward had met her, he said, she had been with the homunculus Greed and worked under him. A chimera. This was where he choked up and Olivier could only cross her arms and wait. 

She was a snake and a human and all their sister, even after a decade. Her hair was cropped short but Olivier looked just like her. He started quietly crying. Even pale and grey and long dead, she looked just like Olivier and their mother. Bradley had killed her and there was nothing he could do to stop it. He had had to wash the blood out of soiled armor and pray they would give her a funeral when they dragged her corpse away. 

They both knew she didn’t get one. It made something curl in Olivier’s stomach and she bit back a frown. Life wasn’t fair enough for people who weren’t fully human. 

Sitting in the bleak hospital room on the stiff bed long after her brother left, Olivier allowed herself a moment to lower her head and sigh. Buccaneer was long dead but at times like this she still wished he was there, a block of warmth and overly loud laughter. Her hand twisted in her lap and she stared at the scissors sitting plainly on the counter across from her, conveniently under a mirror. 

It took no effort for her to pick them up and twirl her hair around a hand, and the sharp sound of sliced hair filled the silence as she chopped through her own. Dusty blonde stands fell across her lap and into the floor and she cut and cut until her hair was cropped above her ears and the nape of the neck. It was shorter than her doctor’s and she brushed the remnants off her shoulders, tilting her head to look in the mirror at a different angle.

She looked sharper, less gentle. Someone a general wouldn’t want to put his hands on. Good. She wanted a change anyway. 

When she slept that night she dreamt of cloudy memories in central, Martel dragging her around by the hand and picking blackberries with her until the nanny caught them.


End file.
